Announcement: Closing the books for the calendar year

As of September 7th, 2017, Buildium has implemented a feature where we will automatically close the books at the end of the calendar year.

Closing the books is an accounting term that means that all activity has finished for a period and no further changes are expected. In effect, as long as no transactions are added, edited or deleted for a past date, you're locking things "as is" so that your reports look the same today as they will years from now. Note: To prevent updates or changes to past transactions, you should reconcile your bank accounts on a monthly basis.

• This update affects four different areas in Buildium:
  1. Balance Sheet
  2. Trial Balance report
  3. General Ledger report
  4. General Ledger page

1. The balance sheet will now display net income and retained earnings in the Equity section.

• The net income value includes the current year’s income, minus the current year’s expenses.
• The retained earnings value includes all previous year’s income, minus all previous year’s expenses.

Please note: Nothing is actually posted and funds do not actually move between accounts. This only populates reports (and the general ledger page) differently.

2. The trial balance will now display a retained earnings row in the Equity section.

• The retained earnings value includes all previous years income, minus all previous year’s expenses
• The income accounts are only displayed if there was a transaction that hit that income account during the current year.
• The expense accounts are only displayed if there was a transaction that hit the expense account during the current year.

3. The general ledger report will now display a line item for retained earnings which will include the net income for the previous fiscal years.

• If the date range of the general ledger report spans two fiscal (calendar) years, retained earnings will display net income from the previous fiscal (calendar) year.

4. The general ledger page will now display all GL accounts that have a transaction occur during the selected date range or have a prior balance.

Previously, general ledger accounts that had a prior balance would not display when the selected date range started on January 1st.

• The retained earnings GL account will only display transactions that have actually hit that account.

This feature does not move funds. What this feature does is represent money in the correct area and format; money is not moving between GL accounts.